The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others is both, a political thriller and a tale of redemption, rather aptly set in the Orwellian year of 1984 in East Berlin. Gerd Wiesler, a seasoned agent of the GDRs secret police, is tasked with spying on a feted playwright and his actress girlfriend, andfinds himself drawn into the lives of those he is conducting surveillance on. While he is gradually exposed to the redeeming powers of art and the joie de vivre of his victims, he falls in love with the writers girlfriend and his intrinsic belief in ideological doctrine slowly fades. When he learns that the surveillance has been initiated due to personal, not political reasons he tries to save the couple from being persecuted by his own organisation even if this means permanent demotion for himself. It was a quote from a famous Russian dictator about art and beauty being the most dangerous of distractions in revolution that made director Von Donnersmarck set out on a three-year quest to put on screen the dichotomy of creative freedom and political oppression. He decided to make his protagonist start out as a Leninesque villain who would be forced to listen to the Appassionata while he invaded other peoples lives for the sake of revolution. The idea of art's redemptive and humanizing power becomes a key theme in The Lives of Others. There is a watershed moment in the film for both, writer and surveillance officer, when the former learns about the suicide of his best friend, a stage director blacklisted by The Powers that Are. Dreyman instinctively reacts by playing the Sonate vom Guten Menschen, which his late friend gave him for his birthday, while Wiesler is listening in from his surveillance post in the attic and is deeply moved by the intricate chords of the music. Listening to this particular piece of music as well as reading Brechts poetry in the preceding scene adds to Wiesler's aesthetic education. The film opens to the sound of reverberating footsteps, which any audience would automatically link to impending military action. Given the films provenience, the sound builds on our collective memory of jackboot totalitarianism , associated with The 1

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Third Reich, adding East Germanys secret police to the mix, thus prepping the audience for the story which is about to enfold. The sound also anticipates the first image of the officer taking a prisoner down a corridor.The camera tracks behind both of them to heighten the sense of anonymity prevalent in the opening scene. The sequence is shot ata very wide angle, which renders the corridor longer and infinitely more frightening because it also makes the walls curve to convey a feeling ofhopelessness. The first shot of Captain Gerd Wiesler, the epitome of GDR efficiency, is lowangle, suggesting his position of authority and power before cutting to Prisoner No 227, who is never referred to by his actual name, in an over- shoulder shot from behind Wiesler. Wieslers physicality is reduced to the absolute minimum to demonstrate his self-control. Von Donner later on The prison sequence is juxtaposed with Wiesler lecturing students at the Stasi University in Potsdam. The agent-cum-instructor aims at enhancing their academic findings by playing a recording of the interrogation. This montageobviously draws on the conceptual banality of evil, by transposing the obvious anguish of an individual into material for supposed academic analysis. In The Lives of Others, the repeated use of montage reminds the audience to focus both on the perpetrator and the victim the interdependence between these two characters thus being made abundantly clear. This is best demonstrated in the scene where Wiesler hears the writer play the sonata. Cutting between the two shots, the camera describes an identical circular motion around both characters, their reactions to the music being intercut and juxtaposed with each other. This sequence echoes the emotional content of 1950s Hollywood melodramas, because it anticipates the dramatic climax of the main narrative arc, the actresss suicide, bringing together the three main characters in the same shot for the only time in the film, effectively both recalling, and then dissolving, the montage of the 2

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earlier sequence. The film as such relies widely on melodramatic devices in so far as it outlines a rigid moral code imposed on the protagonists by then-contemporary GDR society, which thwarts any hope of personal happiness or self-expression. Central to the plot is the operation of bugging and monitoring Dreymans flat, as ordered by the Minister of Culture, who is having an affair with Dreymans girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland. During the minute surveillance that ensues, Wieslers and Dreymanns fates become entwined. As the films ending shows, their connection has not even been completely severed several years later, although roles have been reversed: it is Dreymann now, who, in a long tracking shot spies on the former Stasi officer. A concluding freeze frame of on Capt. Wiesler's face as he accepts the indirect gift of his former victim makes the audience realize that this is the first time Wiesler claims something for himself, not anybody else. Von Donnersmarck has gone to great lengths to capture the dreary atmosphere of East Berlin in 1984 by working with a restricted colour palette that excluded any redsor bright blues. There is dim, cold lighting in which blue and brown filters prevail, which form a smooth visual transition to the clothing worn by most of the characters as well as to the drab utilitarian flat to which Wiesler returns at the end of each day. Wieslers isolation is brilliantly set off against the warm colours abounding in Dreymans flat. This pattern is only disrupted by flashes of Christas white bathrobe, which serves as a visual exclamation mark, as well as by the white telephone, which is openly suggestive of the white telephone genre of cinema. The film excels in showing various methods of terror and intimidation used by the Stasi, such as coercing Dreymanns girlfriend into having reluctant sex with Minister Hempf, and ultimately turning in her lover due to her drug addiction. Wiesler has certainly to be perceived as a round character, progressing neatly from being henchman of a repressive state to one of its most set opponents. He also 3

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appears to be the least conflicted of the three main characters whereasthe other two major characters, the writer and his partner, remain rather flat in their portrayal and have to deal with ongoing inner conflicts. The audience witnesses Christa-Maria Sieland's increasing desperation as she withdraws into her addiction in order to be able to bear the Ministers sexual perversions and later on, to denounce her lover for the sake of her art. Knowing that any failure at collaboration will inevitable end her career Christa-Maria takes full responsibility for her action and by committing suicide is thus redeemed. Georg Dreyman, the poster boy among GDR writers, is initially content to create works of art within the limited cultural frame imposed by the government , but is eventually forced to face the other side of the coin after his closest friend has committed suicide and his partner has denounced him.

The film has to be read as an avowal of humanity to which each of us has to subscribe to, even at the most difficult of times, as it provides the aesthetic space in which values such as friendship, loyalty and self-expression can be articulated.

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Bibliography

Cox, Damien and Michael P. Levine: Dueck, Cheryl:

Fisher, Jamie and Brad Prager:

Lindenberger, Thomas:

Matthew H. Bernstein:

Schmidt , Gary:

Stein , Mary Beth:

Brockmann, Stephen:

Thinking Through Film: Doing Philosophy, Watching Movies , John Wiley & Sons, 2011 The Humanization of the Stasi in "Das Leben der Anderen",IN: German Studies Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Oct., 2008), pp. 599609 The Collapse of the Conventional: German Film and Its Politics at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television), Wayne St University Press , 2010 Stasiploitation: Why Not? The Scriptwriter's Historical Creativity in "The Lives of Others", IN: German Studies Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Oct., 2008), pp. 557-566 The Lives of Others: Matthew H. Bernstein on an Emotive Surveillance Thriller Set inCommunist East Germany, IN: Film Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Fall 2007), pp. 30-36 Between Authors and Agents: Gender and Affirmative Culture in Das Leben der Anderen, IN: The German Quarterly, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Spring 2009), pp. 231-249 Stasi with a Human Face? Ambiguity in "Das Leben der Anderen", IN: German Studies Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Oct., 2008), pp. 567-579 A Critical History of German Film (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture), Camden House Inc., 2010